1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to team communication, specifically to providing a portal system to facilitate knowledge transfer within a team.
2. Description of Related Art
Teams today are driven by information. Success is often just as much a factor of classroom preparation and mental training as it is physical training. Even the most gifted workers will not find success in the workplace unless they have a solid understanding of their tasks to complete and the resources they have at their disposal.
Team leaders face the challenge of mentally training their team members as well as physically training them. There exists a wealth of information and leaders must filter and deliver that which is relevant to their team in a way that is comprehensive yet still maintains the team members' attention.
Teams today are continually looking to new technologies to enhance this content delivery process. There exist a variety of solutions that attempt to address this need, but even the best information technology infrastructures have a number of significant shortcomings that keep them from truly empowering teams.
Within the sports team realm, current attempts are plagued by a failure to place the technology directly in the team member's hands, instead focusing on team leaders. Furthermore, current attempts fail to provide a comprehensive solution. Video viewing and commenting, work flow (or, in the sports team realm, playbook) viewing and editing, messaging, and reporting are currently separated into disparate systems that do not adequately interact. Additionally, current attempts fail to take a holistic approach, combining the many facets of a team leader or team member's experience into a single portal. Current systems are further plagued by a lack of mobility. Existing stationary systems for knowledge transfer discourage team member use by requiring the individual to be at a specific location using a stationary workstation. Also, current attempts often result in the duplication of work. Due to teams having a limited number of stationary workstations at their disposal, leaders are required to maintain both a library of videos, work flow diagrams, and reports on a server and a printed version of all of these for team member use. Finally, current attempts suffer from a lack of personalization, failing to allow full content customization. Team leaders cannot send content directly to the team member(s) that needs it, and cannot monitor a team member's use of the system and progress through content or exams. The majority of these attempts exclusively address sports applications.
An example of a previous attempt to address these unresolved needs involves video editing and tagging solutions for teams (see, for example, XOS TECHNOLOGIES. However, this attempted system does not currently provide a system that puts video and playbook software in the team member's hands. A further elaboration on this attempted system incorporates freehand notations into play diagrams from Tablet PCs (see, for example, SAGIO SOFTWARE. However, this attempted system does not incorporate video into its solution and is focused primarily on analysis software from a statistical standpoint.
Another example of an attempted system provides a video game simulator in which teams use video game controllers and laptop computers to simulate football games that incorporate their team's plays against mock defenses (see, for example, GRIDIRON TECHNOLOGIES. Teams can enter a variety of plays and potential scenarios to be run with custom-built players whose sizes, strengths and speeds can be set to match those of the team's own players and opponents. However, this type of system focuses solely on simulating in-game scenarios in a realistic game environment and not incorporating interactive videos, reports and work flow diagrams.
Another example of an attempted system provides team members with access to videos from home by allowing server access for the viewing and downloading of video clips on any computer with Internet access (see, for example, COACHCOMM or DARTFISH. Providing access to these items over the Internet, however, presents a potential security issue in that unauthorized users can more easily gain access to this information when it does not require proprietary software to view. Furthermore, this type of system fails to present a holistic solution that incorporates a virtual playbook and interactive reports with video, and the videos presented cannot be commented on using digital ink and text annotations, and voice recordings.
Another example of an attempted system uses Tablet PC technology for video viewing and annotation (see, for example, LRSSPORTS), but offers this system only as a solution for coaches, not for players, and focuses its application on immediate corrections as opposed to distributing corrections post fact.
Although most video editing and tagging platforms allow for teams to burn DVDs or prepare VHS tapes for their players to review and some have allowed for viewing of video over the Internet or on portable devices such as Video IPODs, there still remains a large gap wherein these videos cannot be customized and annotated for each team member, and cannot be transferred over a network to a portable device for team member review. DVDs or VHS tapes are cumbersome and require the physical transfer of the media source. Similarly, portable devices, such as IPODs, require a direct physical connection to the media source to download videos and, with limited screen dimensions, fail to provide players with a resolution that enables them to read coaches' notes or diagrams that are placed directly on the video. Solutions that rely on remote storage of content and only allow videos to be viewed over the Internet do not provide portability for plane or road trips, are limited by the speed at which video can be streamed over the web, require constant network connectivity to function, and present a security concern.